A Hunk Of Manly, Uh, Manness

The New York Times has a snort-worthy shill piece today, spinning gushing yarns about Obama’s supposed macho activities.

Instead of successfully achieving the goal of portraying Obama as an “alpha-male,” it leaves the reader feeling rather squeamish, as if the article’s author has a giggly, “man-crush” on the President.

The president, after all, is an unabashed First Guy’s Guy. Since being elected, he has demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of college hoops on ESPN, indulged a craving for weekend golf, expressed a preference for adopting a “big rambunctious dog” over a “girlie dog” and hoisted beer in a peacemaking effort.

Yep. Obama is a masculine tyrannosaurus, compensating for a lack of male virility by purchasing a big dog. (“Bo”, his Portuguese water dog, is a veritable “Cujo.”)

He presides over a White House rife with fist-bumping young men who call each other “dude” and testosterone-brimming personalities like Rahm Emanuel, the often-profane chief of staff; Lawrence Summers, the brash economic adviser; and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, who habitually speaks in sports metaphors.

Robert Gibbs? ROBERT GIBBS? Riiiight. I think testosterone overload every time he speaks. Gibbs is about as macho as the “PC guy” form the Apple commercials. The Times places Rahm Emanuel in the manly column due to his penchant for cussin’, while Dick Cheney was thrashed by the media for telling Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to go “f-ck yourself.”

Mr. Obama is hardly the first commander in chief whose penchant for sports and other guyish stuff (comic books, “Star Trek”) has become part of his presidential persona. The first President George Bush presented himself as a horseshoe-playing, pork-rind-eating Texan. He was followed by the Big Mac-gobbling, cigar-chomping Bill Clinton and the brush-clearing, bike-busting George W. Bush.

For corn’s sake. Horking down a Big Mac (a la, Homer Simpson) is manly to these people? They would have been better off citing Clinton’s shirt chasing as opposed to his consumption of junk food. (Just think “cigar” and “Lewinsky.”)

What kind of a journalist can honestly write this without feeling some sort of shame? For years, the Times and the left have vilified George Bush as some sort of cowboy: The “ultimate American male archetype of our time,” as defined by historian Douglas Brinkley.

I guess we can assume that Obama’s bullying of Fox News is an extension of some sort of phallic inadequacy.